Hey! Look! The baby boomers are here! We’re panthers and we’re stalking the corridors of Chaffey College with our silvery hair and our gentle wrinkles, looking for the right classroom. Have you noticed us? (We’re generally age 50 to 65…)

Chaffey College has long had a sizable contingent of baby boomers on campus. Records show that roughly 650 to 790 of us have registered for classes in the last 5 years. Our numbers wax and wane but mostly show a steady increase over the years. Nationwide, boomers make up almost 4% of all college students in the U.S. At Chaffey this semester, we top that at almost 6% of students. So why are we here and how do we fit in among our younger peers?

At the Student Exhibition that opens at the Wignal on December 3, check out the large piece that looks like a portrait of the Dutch master Rembrandt. The student who created this digital piece is Robert LeClair, a baby boomer who returned to college for vocational reasons and discovered something new and challenging.

His piece is an assertion that computer graphics is part of art history. Rembrandt made some 40 self portraits that gradually revealed a lifetime of tragedy and loss. In this homage to the master, LeClair echoes Rembrandt’s infusion of humanity, religion and family into his work, using his wife as model, as Rembrandt frequently did.

I first encountered Robert LeClair in a summer class for computer graphics.

Our final project that summer was to create a “propaganda poster” to persuade our peers to accept our point of view on a topic we felt passionate about. I thought, oh boy, here we are, the golden oldies, the silver panthers, oh let’s be honest, us old folks seeking to propagandize to the teens and twenty-somethings in our class. Robert came up with a winner, a simple anti-abortion poster, featuring an adorable baby with a simple message: I’m not a political issue, I’m a real thing.

At the bottom of the poster, in very small lettering he added, “This message brought to you by God.” The class loved the poster; not all appreciated the wording at the bottom. But Robert continues to try to slip in hidden and he hopes subtle messages. In the web design class, he created a web page inspired by the movie “2012” and listing all the end of the world predictions created by various cultures and societies, from the Mayan to the Christian. He also slipped in an evangelical message that he hoped would subtly get his Christian message across.

LeClair wasn’t always so intent on doing missionary work among young people. He spent 30 years in a career in the printing industry, starting out as a lithographic stripper and moving up into management of the stripping department and finally to managing the transition from the old printing process to the current computerized web printers. When that was done, the stripping department was abolished and some 30 people were laid off. When he found himself laid off, he decided to take advantage of the time he had to return for a formal degree in graphic arts, to better prepare himself to re-enter the work force.

But after 3 years at Chaffey, LeClair had to admit he was burned out on two-dimensional arts. He was sick of Quark, Photoshop, Illustrator. He had worked in typography and in two dimensions all his professional life and was ready for something different. He found it in motion graphics and multi-media, discovering a more dynamic approach to the visual arts. His time at Chaffey has opened the possibility of creating commercials, working in video.

But LeClair, like many baby boomers, has already lived a full professional life, has already raised a family and hears the lure of retirement calling. With children in Florida and Arizona, he finds himself with the financial security to leave Southern California and go where he chooses. It’s tempting.

LeClair will pick up his Associates’ Degree in Graphic Design with an emphasis on Motion Graphics and Multimedia. He could continue and become a teacher with a few more years at college. After all, he has been teaching kung fu since he received his black belt at age 19. “Kung Fu means excellence,” Le Clair says, “and it doesn’t mean excellence in the martial arts. You can have excellence as a garbage collector. That’s all.”

LeClair embodies many of the traits ascribed to boomers returning to college. And Chaffey has managed by dint of its teachers, to make it a welcoming and productive place for us. I’m hoping in this blog, to introduce you to other members of my age cohort at Chaffey. We come in all sizes, shapes, colors and persuasions. Our reasons for coming are varied. But we all have unique stories. Not one of us is the same. I promise.